Kunsthalle Bielefeld to Revisit the 80s with Exhibition from The Bischofberger Collection

BIELEFELD.- The spirit of the 1980s was marked by many contradictions. Many young artists felt the lack of a home base, and yet they were full of energy. In their works, cool abstraction existed side-by-side with a strong Neo-Expressionism. No one was more intensively involved with this fierce, young generation than Swiss gallerist Bruno Bischofberger, who assembled the most important collection of 1980s art ever. After almost thirty years, a re-examination of these pictures’ powerful aesthetics makes it easy to see that the quality of painting in the late twentieth century was very high. It was all about the “battle against boredom,” that is, a wholehearted revival of painting.

Francesco Clemente: Distance, 1981, watercolor on paper

Due to the magnitude of the collection, The 80s Revisited will be presented in two parts. The first part will feature works by John Armleder, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Jirí Georg Dokoupil and the Mülheimer Freiheit, Rainer Fetting, Salomé, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Philip Taaffe, and others. The second part, in 2011, will take a look at New York’s stars of the 1980s, such as Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The 80s Revisited: the Bischofberger Collection is sponsored by the Kulturstiftung pro Bielefeld. An exceptionally superior, 400-page catalogue will be available at a cost of 29 Euros (Museum Edition).